The Serbian Supreme Court overruled the judgement of the Belgrade War Crimes Chamber which had acquitted Sinan Morina, a one-time member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), of all charges that he had committed a war crime against Serbian civilians in Kosovo in 1998.
Non-governmental organizations from Serbia fully support the request by Žanka Stojanović and the Association of families of victims of the NATO bombing of the Serbian TV headquarters (RTS) in 1999, for the renewal and extension of court proceedings regarding the death of 16 RTS workers that the families believe were sacrificed by the state and military authorities of Serbia. The request was submitted to the Special prosecutor’s office for organised crime in Belgrade.
The UN Committee Against Torture (”the Committee”) has considered the case of violence and racial abuse against a Roma man and as of May 8th 2009 has issued a decision finding Serbia to have been in violation of a number of provisions of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (‘CAT’).
On the fourteenth annual commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide, without doubt Europe’s largest organized war crime since the second world war, human rights organizations from Serbia expressed concern that Serbia had failed to declare July 11th the Day of Commemoration of the Srebrenica Genocide.
The French journalist Florence Hartmann, a former spokesperson of the prosecutor’s office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, is charged with “knowingly and wilfully interfering with the administration of justice by disclosing information in violation of an order of the Appeals Chamber dated 20 September 2005 and an order of the Appeals Chamber dated 6 April 2006, through means of authoring for publication a book entitled Paix et Châtiment, and by authoring for publication an article entitled “Vital Genocide Documents Concealed.”
BEOGRAD, 23 June 2009 – The War Crimes Chamber of the Belgrade District Court, presided by Judge Vesko Krstajić, found Damir Sireta guilty of the criminal act of a war crime against prisoners of war from Article 144 of the Criminal Code of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (KZ SRJ), in relation to Article 22 of the KZ SRJ, and sentenced him to 20 years’ imprisonment.
BELGRADE, 22 June 2009 – The Office of the Republic Attorney General has submitted a request for revision of the Belgrade District Court’s judgement which confirmed the judgement rendered by the First Municipal Court relating to the lawsuit filed by Radmila and Dragomir Petrović from Belgrade against the Republic of Serbia. The First Municipal Court judgement had awarded Radmila and Dragomir Petrović RSD one million each in non-material damages due to psychological suffering caused by the death of their only son. The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) filed the compensation lawsuit on behalf of Radmila and Dragomir Petrović on December 26th 2002.
BELGRADE, 18 June 2009 — The War Crimes Chamber of the Belgrade District Court, presided by Judge Snežana Nikolić-Garotić, found four members of the Scorpions, a reserve unit of the Serbian Ministry of Interior, guilty of committing a war crime against Albanian civilians on March 28th 1999 in Podujevo, Kosovo, and sentenced Željko Đukić, Dragan Medić and Dragan Borojević to 20 and Miodrag Šolaja to 15 years’ imprisonment.
Nataša Kandić, Executive Director of the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) sent a letter earlier today to Justice Vesko Krstajić, member of the Trial Chamber of the Belgrade District Court informing him of her decision to stop representing the Bitići/Bytyqi family in the criminal proceedings against the accused Sreten Popović and others because it is her and the Bitići/Bytyqi family’s opinion that the trial is not intended to bring justice to the victims but to protect those who ordered the cold-blooded murder of Agron, Mehmet, and Yllia Bytyqi from criminal responsibility.